Because You Need Me (Falling for You, Book Two) Read Free Page A

Penny was stretched out on the sand beside me, her cute little nose buried in a book while my hungry eyes unabashedly savored the way her body filled out an itsy bitsy-
    Rachel cleared her throat in a grating way that yanked my attention back to the task at hand. I was stuck in a meeting that I was longing to end so I didn’t have to discreetly text Penny.
    I gave Rachel my full attention and ire. Suddenly, she was speechless. “Yes?”
    Rachel was one of the strongest closers on my team. To be honest, when I met her, I roped her in with many of the young, attractive, women that cycled through my company’s doors, falsely believing all it took to succeed was an Ivy League education and a pretty face. Towering over male and female staff at 6’2, with pale blonde hair and a rail thin frame accentuated by pastels that she often paired with black slacks, I would have bet on Wade Enterprises chewing her up and spitting her out.
    I would have been wrong.
    Rachel backed up her charm with a ferocious ability to relate to everyone from a mom and pop operation to a deluded CEO used to being told he was right when he was often incorrect. She worked her way from junior executive to the head of her department with a legion of junior executives at her beck and call.
    But distracted or no, there was one person at the head of the table. I didn’t have to utter a syllable nor pull my lips into a scowl before she shrunk in her stilettos and her words stumbled from her mouth.
    “I’m sorry Mr. Wade, it’s just that Carson Mechanics is a big score for us and the CEO seems onboard with our vision, but he’s done everything but come right out and say that he wants a face to face with you.” She dropped her electric blue eyes to safe territory, wiping her sweaty palms on the front of her pants. “He claims he’s a big fan of your story-”
    “If I held every client’s hand, I would never get anything done,” I said coolly. I knew the type. The CEO at Carson Mechanics was squirrelly and non-comital. It was her job to take away every option but Wade Enterprises, and not because I agreed to some lunch where I stroked his ego. She needed to show him that he was lucky that we were sparing our time and resources. To be frank, he was lucky we were considering taking them on as a client at all. He needed us a hell of a lot more than we needed him. “If you can’t close-”
    “I never said that,” she cut in quickly. She raised her chin, the defiant set of her jaw reminding me of the woman I took a chance on years ago. She was the youngest executive on staff, but I had seen a fire in her. It roared back to life as she gathered her paperwork with precise, crisp movements that told me she’d take no prisoners. “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Wade.”
    She marched from the room like a woman on a mission and I smiled to myself, a smile that froze in place when I glanced over at Caitlyn.
    I knew my assistant had an extensive catalogue of frowns, from the, ‘Today I’m Already up to Here, so no BS’ to ‘You Drive Me Crazy, Xander-but I Wouldn’t Have it Any Other Way’. Today, she’d had it.
    “You were not only rude to Rachel by day dreaming your way through her presentation, but you had the nerve to talk about how busy you are-”
    “I am busy.” I adjusted my tie and slid back from the table like I had places to go and people to see. It was my way of closing the subject, but I knew it would take more than those three words and a chair screech to make Caitlyn back down.
    “That’s just the thing, Xander, you’re not busy.” Her fierce gaze locked me in my seat. Rushing off to my next meeting or to the safety of my office was not an option. “You’ve been postponing appointments and meetings, canceling entire days-”
    “I’m fully aware of what I’m doing,” I assured her. I knew it was a lie. We knew it was a lie. Even now, I was only half listening to her. The rest of my mind was already trying to figure out when I’d